No Arabic abstract
Field-induced domain wall dynamics in ferroelectric materials underpins multiple applications ranging from actuators to information technology devices and necessitates a quantitative description of the associated mechanisms including giant electromechanical couplings, controlled non-linearities, or low coercive voltages. While the advances in dynamic Piezoresponse Force Microscopy measurements over the last two decades have rendered visualization of polarization dynamics relatively straightforward, the associated insights into the local mechanisms have been elusive. Here we explore the domain dynamics in model polycrystalline materials using a workflow combining deep learning-based segmentation of the domain structures with non-linear dimensionality reduction using multilayer rotationally-invariant autoencoders (rVAE). The former allows unambiguous identification and classification of the ferroelectric and ferroelastic domain walls. The rVAE discover the latent representations of the domain wall geometries and their dynamics, thus providing insight into the intrinsic mechanisms of polarization switching, that can further be compared to simple physical models. The rVAE disentangles the factors affecting the pinning efficiency of ferroelectric walls, offering insights into the correlation of ferroelastic wall distribution and ferroelectric wall pinning.
Magnetic field-driven domain wall motion in an ultrathin Pt/Co(0.45nm)/Pt ferromagnetic film with perpendicular anisotropy is studied over a wide temperature range. Three different pinning dependent dynamical regimes are clearly identified: the creep, the thermally assisted flux flow and the depinning, as well as their corresponding crossovers. The wall elastic energy and microscopic parameters characterizing the pinning are determined. Both the extracted thermal rounding exponent at the depinning transition, $psi=$0.15, and the Larkin length crossover exponent, $phi=$0.24, fit well with the numerical predictions.
Atomic force microscopy was used to investigate ferroelectric switching and nanoscale domain dynamics in epitaxial PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 thin films. Measurements of the writing time dependence of domain size reveal a two-step process in which nucleation is followed by radial domain growth. During this growth, the domain wall velocity exhibits a v ~ exp[-(1/E)^mu] dependence on the electric field, characteristic of a creep process. The domain wall motion was analyzed both in the context of stochastic nucleation in a periodic potential as well as the canonical creep motion of an elastic manifold in a disorder potential. The dimensionality of the films suggests that disorder is at the origin of the observed domain wall creep. To investigate the effects of changing the disorder in the films, defects were introduced during crystal growth (a-axis inclusions) or by heavy ion irradiation, producing films with planar and columnar defects, respectively. The presence of these defects was found to significantly decrease the creep exponent mu, from 0.62 - 0.69 to 0.38 - 0.5 in the irradiated films and 0.19 - 0.31 in the films containing a-axis inclusions.
We study the evolution of an elastic string into the pinned state at driving forces slightly below the depinning threshold force $F_c$. We quantify the temporal evolution of the string by an {it activity function} $A(t)$ representing the fraction of active nodes at time $t$ and find three distinct dynamic regimes. There is an initial stage of fast decay of the activity; in the second, intermediate, regime, an exponential decay of activity is observed; and, eventually, the fast collapse of the string towards its final pinned state results in an decay in the activity with $Am sim (t_p-t)^{psi}$, where $t_p$ is the pinning time in the finite system involved.
We report the dielectric dispersion of the giant magnetocapacitance (GMC) in multiferroic DyMnO$_{3}$ over a wide frequency range. The GMC is found to be attributable not to the softened electromagnon but to the electric-field-driven motion of multiferroic domain wall (DW). In contrast to conventional ferroelectric DWs, the present multiferroic DW motion holds extremely high relaxation rate of $sim$$10^{7}$ s$^{-1}$ even at low temperatures. This mobile nature as well as the model simulation suggests that the multiferroic DW is not atomically thin as in ferroelectrics but thick, reflecting its magnetic origin.
We study a minimal model for a relaxor ferroelectric including dipolar interactions, and short-range harmonic and anharmonic forces for the critical modes as in the theory of pure ferroelectrics together with quenched disorder coupled linearly to the critical modes. We present the simplest approximate solution of the model necessary to obtain the principal features of the correlation functions. Specifically, we calculate and compare the structure factor measured by neutron scattering in different characteristic regimes of temperature in the relaxor PbMg$_{1/3}$Nb$_{2/3}$O$_3$.